Sri Lankan Tamil ordered to report for removal at Vancouver airport as Canada's deportations hit a record

Canada Border Services Agency insignia, as published by Jaffna Monitor

Canada Border Services Agency insignia, as published by Jaffna Monitor · Image source

Source published Nov 5, 2026 · Vancouver

What To Know

Canada's border agency told Lakshikan Punitharasa, a Sri Lankan Tamil, to report at 7:20 a.m. on Thursday, November 5, to a small office on the arrivals level of Vancouver International Airport's international terminal, three hours before a flight out of the country, according to Jaffna Monitor, which obtained a copy of the letter. The letter, dated October 28 and served in person by the Canada Border Services Agency's enforcement division for the Pacific region, warned in bold type that failure to comply "may result in the issuance of a warrant for your arrest and detention." The letter does not name his destination, the type of removal order against him or the grounds for it, and the agency does not comment on individual cases. His flight was scheduled to leave Vancouver at about 10:20 a.m. local time on Thursday; Jaffna Monitor reported it could not confirm by Friday whether he boarded the flight.

The case comes as the agency removed 23,160 people in 2025, the most in its history and up from 17,397 the year before, according to the report. A briefing note prepared for the public safety minister in June put the current pace at about 400 removals a week. Most of those removed are refugee claimants whose claims failed or who did not meet the conditions attached to them, while between 1,000 and 1,200 a year are removed on the most serious grounds, including organized crime, serious criminality and threats to national security. Nearly half of last year's removals took place in Quebec, and Mexico, India and Haiti accounted for the largest numbers.

Background: the enforcement push began in December 2024, when the government of Justin Trudeau gave the agency $55.5 million over three years and set a target of 20,000 removals in each of the next two fiscal years, and Prime Minister Mark Carney's government has since promised 1,000 more border officers, some of them for removals. On Thursday, the same day Mr. Punitharasa was due at the airport, the government published its immigration plan for 2027 through 2029, keeping permanent resident admissions at 380,000 a year, limiting new temporary arrivals to 370,000 and offering permanent status to as many as 200,000 temporary residents already in the country. The agency reports to Gary Anandasangaree, who became public safety minister in May 2025; born in Sri Lanka, he arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1983 and, as a lawyer in 2010, advised many of the Tamil asylum seekers detained after the cargo ship MV Sun Sea reached British Columbia carrying 492 Tamils. About 30,000 people were waiting to be removed as of this spring, according to the report.